101–110 of 350 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. They could use a warrant to compel the sender or the recipient of the messages to unlock them or face jail time. But Apple doesn't have the keys.
wouldn't the 5th amendment protect against that?
See, that's funny. Because what concerns me is that the government thinks they are beyond the law.
More importantly, Apple's warranty canary was removed which either means they were served by National Security Letter or (if you're optimistic sort of person) that they are no longer committed to notifying consumers in the event that have been, which flies directly in face of all the PR talk of security commitment recently [7]. Plus remember, Apple can push whatever software they want to your personal device. That's how smartphones work.
We are led to two questions:
A) Why wouldn't the same tactics, National Security Letters and ORCHESTRA-type attacks work [8]? Don't we remember from the Snowden leaks that NSA agents infiltrate tech companies and backdoor software at the source when other avenues are closed or gridlocked?
B) Why all of the publicity about about how secure Apple's product are from snooping? Do we really think we can get away from ubiquidous global surveillance that easily?
I'm sorry. Investigative bodies don't publicly announce what technologies they can't track. There is no phone you can buy on the mass market that will keep your data safe with the exception of - perhaps? - the BlackPhone [9].
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-google-meet-with-obama-...
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/obama-tech-executiv...
[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/apples_imessa...
[4] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/22/apple-data/
[5] https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-la...
[6] https://pentest.com/ios_backdoors_attack_points_surveillance...
[7] https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappea...
[8] http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org//2014/Janson/Sund...
[9] https://www.blackphone.ch/
Additional reading:
(1) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_problems_...
(2) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/defending_aga...
(3) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/is_iphone_sec...
They are going straight into "think of the children mode" " Smartphone communication is “going to be the preferred method of the pedophile and the criminal. We are going to lose a lot of investigative opportunities." Apparently "what about the terrorists?" isn't as effective anymore. Let's hope the public will see through their manipulative talking points.
fwiw my friend's dad was our chief of police for years, and he only ever wore a shirt and tie.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd say this about as close as you can get to a ringing endorsement Or they just want criminals to think that all they have to do is buy an Apple or Google phone, and they can't be caught.
> Or they just want criminals to think that all they have to do is buy an Apple or Google phone, and they can't be caught. There is a greater incentive to let Apple or Google do that kind of marketing and quietly exploit the vulnerabilities (ie, what's been happening with the NSA for some time now). If it had the appearance of working but actually didn't you wouldn't hear a peep from any government.
This is a bit like protesting door locks because they make it harder to pop in and look around.
I don't support what the government is trying to do here, but minimizing this issue like this is not doing us any favors. The issue isn't that law enforcement can no longer "look around" your phone. The issue is that they can no longer get a warrant and use what is on your phone as evidence in an investigation or court case without the phone owner's cooperation. Basically your phone goes from being personal property…
Encryption might make it hard for them to find much of use, but that's not our problem. A really sturdy safe will make it difficult to execute a warrant too, but that's not an argument for deliberately compromising the integrity of safes.
I can, of course, understand why law enforcement wouldn't be happy about this. They shouldn't be happy about this. But the rest of us should be perfectly happy to tell them to pound sand.
My reply is... "What about the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution?" Would we really be having these discussions if Americans (speaking as an American here) were better-educated on our own rights, our own foundation, the very fibers of our own history? I mean, this is such a simple amendment, so crystal-clear and eloquent. After reading it (see below), how can there possibly be any doubt as to how the…
You should better educate yourself, the article is about seizure with a warrant, with which Apple and Google will no longer be able to help them.
My expectation is anyone participating in illegal activities would already be using encryption. Encryption is readily available and and isn't very tedious as long as someone walks you through it. It is not like terrorists use Google docs and write their plans in plain text. What am I missing? The best I can infer from desperation of government is that they want to control people by collecting as much info as possible…
I don't know how many times you've tried to 'walk someone through' using moderately complicated software, but I've had to do it enough times to realize that there's no such thing as foolproof. I once advised a lady who kept three phones because she was worried that her ex-husband was breaking into her communications.
At one point she called me frantic that her husband had broken into her phone. I calmed her down and asked her what had happened. He'd called/texted her at a number she had been trying to keep secret from him. I surmised that she had accidentally sent him a text from the secret phone and had her go through her recent communications until she'd found it.
Information security is something that doesn't seem terribly hard to most geeks, because many of us have an intuitive understanding of threat models and how things work underneath. We can be skeptical of companies that say that they take security seriously. Most everyone else is utterly reliant on commercial solutions and has no idea how to understand how following a set of procedures makes them safe, or what happens when they fail to follow them, what the failure modes are.
It is completely unsurprising to me that criminals use their cell phones to document criminal acts, it falls totally in line with how people tend to think about technology. So I believe law enforcement when they say that cell phone searches have become an important tool to help them investigate crime.
Do I believe they should have that access? To me the answer is unclear. It would be easy to conflate LE with the NSA and say hell no. But there are some very bad people out there that cell phone searching gives us a critical advantage over. If it were up to me, I'd say to solve this problem at a different level by legalizing the drugs whose trade promotes criminality. In absence of that, legal searches procured through warrants seems to be better than nothing, and we should fix abuses through regulatory action rather than blanket, reactionary bans on useful enforcement techniques.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My sympathies for the FBI's concern about people being "beyond the law" is lessened a great deal given the past decade of revelations of illegal actions at FBI forensic centers, and the complete lack of prosecutions, not to mention the NSA spying, etc. Even the TSA is in violation of the law (fourth amendment protects against search without warrant, USC 18-242 makes violating that a federal crime, and a felony if don…
Okay the TSA argument is brought up all the time, and the overall consensus as that you are voluntarily giving up your fourth amendment rights by consenting to the search.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My sympathies for the FBI's concern about people being "beyond the law" is lessened a great deal given the past decade of revelations of illegal actions at FBI forensic centers, and the complete lack of prosecutions, not to mention the NSA spying, etc. Even the TSA is in violation of the law (fourth amendment protects against search without warrant, USC 18-242 makes violating that a federal crime, and a felony if don…
Okay the TSA argument is brought up all the time, and the overall consensus as that you are voluntarily giving up your fourth amendment rights by consenting to the search.
It is not voluntary for airports to use TSA. Therefore you have no alternative options when it comes to air travel. Saying traveling by ground is an adequate alternative is nonsense.